New Prosumer Coolpix 5400 camera from Nikon

The announcement of the Coolpix 5400 strengthens Nikon's prosumer digital range and consolidates Nikon's position as one of the top three brands in the 5mp sector. Its 4x zoom lens gives a focal length of 28-116mm (35mm equivalent), covering a broad range of photographic situations from landscapes to interiors, family groups to individual portraits. The lens construction is 9 elements in 4 groups, comprising an Extra Low Dispersion (ED) glass element to guarantee sharpness and colour correction by minimising chromatic aberration, plus two aspherical elements to virtually eliminate problems of coma and distortion - even when used at the widest aperture.

The autofocus employs a contrast-detect through the lens system, offering a focus range from 50cm to infinity, down to an impressive 1cm in macro mode, making it the closest focussing consumer digital still camera in the world.

The Coolpix 5400 features a new model CCD sensor, fully integrated into an upgraded imaging system that maximises the advanced Zoom-Nikkor optical lens. Improvements to picture quality of the 5400 include the use of a primary (RGB) colour filter that closely matches the gamut of the human eye, ensuring wide ranging, vibrant colours.

Other new features to the image processing system include: a new image-processing engine that improves the colour rendition, edge definition and reduces fringing, enhanced CCD micro lens design to increase light collection and optimise optical performance and an equivalent ISO rating extending from 50-400.

The Coolpix 5400 has several innovative new features allowing greater flexibility and creativity, particularly with different time-based techniques. Nerw features are: Five Shot Buffer feature - the camera records images continuously, holding the five most recent frames in its memory. This feature is ideal for action photography when you know that something is about to happen, but you're not sure quite when. Time lapse photography mode - the camera captures a series of still pictures at specified intervals and joins them together to create a silent movie.

Other new features include: Auto-Exposure Best Shot Selector - the camera captures five images at different exposure values and records only the best exposed shot to the memory card, 15 scene modes including portrait, party/indoor, night portrait, beach/snow, Up to 70 second Movie Mode with audio, RGB colour space, 7 full frames at 3fps, 1/4000th sec shutter speed in all exposure modes, 2 new flash modes - rear curtain sync and repeating flash for strobe photography, Timed/ BULB release - shutter can be manually set for up to 10 minutes, Zoom in and out in 6 stages when in Playback and Date can be printed on images as with Coolpix 3100 and 2100.